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Fort Loramie boys basketball coach resigns

Monday, 07 July 2008

FORT LORAMIE — Fort Loramie head boys basketball coach Eric Gabriel has resigned his position after two seasons, he confirmed Monday night.

Gabriel’s first team finished 8-13, but his second team came back to finish with a 15-8 mark last season.

He resigned to take a post as an assistant mens basketball coach at Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. His duties there begin Aug. 3.

“I always thought I would want to coach at the college level,” Gabriel said. “After coaching two years at the high school level, it made me realize that that’s what I wanted to do. A lot of things intrigued me about it, and my wife and I decided that if we were going to make a move, we should do it now before we started a family.”

Gabriel said he would be working within the school in North Carolina, and not just coaching.

He called the decision “bittersweet,” and said it was a tough decision to leave Fort Loramie.

“I can’t even explain how tough it was to leave,” Gabriel said from a basketball camp at Ohio Northern Monday night. “My wife and I talked about it day after day for a week. It’s the kids that make it really tough. They were great, and the community was great. The people would do anything to help the program.”

Making the decision even tougher was coming off an excellent season last year, with the promise of more good things to come this year.

“I said all along, that first year we did a lot of different things,” Gabriel said. “They were doing things that I really wasn’t used to. But the second year, the kids really bought in to what we were doing. I can’t say I was satisfied with 15 wins, but it was a step in the right direction.

“I was really excited about the upcoming season,” he added. “It’s one of those situations where a year from now, you’re going to look back and hope you did the right thing.”

Wells named AD

Meanwhile, principal Mike Roche said Fort Loramie has named a new athletic director to replace Josh Clune, who left the school to become the AD at neighboring Minster.

Chad Wells, an Indiana native, will take over for Clune and perform the same duties, including AD as well as physical education teacher.

Wells lives in New Bremen and has taught at Minster in the past. His latest teaching position was at Parkway.